Wait, Divergent Might Make How Much Its Opening Weekend?

The Internet has no idea what to think about Divergent. On some days in some optimistic corners of cyberspace, it’s painted as the next coming of The Hunger Games, an extremely exciting juggernaut that will inspire all the popular 2014 Halloween costumes and net hundreds of millions in profits. On other days in more pessimistic corners of cyberspace, it’s painted as an impending, Hindenberg-esque disaster that will hemorrhage money and stink to high heaven. Most comment sections are evidence for the latter, but apparently, all the tracking numbers are evidence for the former.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the early indicators are forecasting a roughly $65,000,000 first weekend for Divergent. That would put it roughly in line with the first Twilight film and would no doubt make the studio very excited that its gamble paid off. In fact, the adaptation of Veronica Roth’s novel is reportedly tracking better than the aforementioned vampire romance with men and in the categories of "first choice", "total awareness" and "definite interest".

It probably shouldn’t come as a big surprise that a hot young adult property would be preparing to open big, but numerous recent failures have made studios and audiences squeamish. Vampire Academy, The Mortal Instruments and Beautiful Creatures (easily the best of the three) all failed to truly break out at the box office, and given the almost absurd negativity non-fans have toward this movie, I’m not sure it would have shocked anyone if this project would have opened with a whimper.

All of this is still hypothetical at this point, however. Analysts have gotten way, way better at predicting the financials on upcoming movies, but with this one so far off, we still don’t know how the reviews will be or whether or not casual fans will bother turning out on opening weekend. If there’s one thing teenagers do, it’s talk to each other. So, bad buzz could offer up big problems.

Divergent opens wide on March 21st. The film stars it girl Shailene Woodley, as well as an eclectic cast including Theor James, Zoe Kravitz, Maggie Q, Miles Teller, Jai Courtney and Kate Winslet. It’s being put together and packaged by Summit and Lionsgate. You can check out the trailer below…